


Hold me Down

by Helicidae



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Forced Feminization, M/M, Rape, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:54:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helicidae/pseuds/Helicidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is forced to hold John down while Moriarty rapes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt: sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/5950.html

Before Sherlock was even half awake he was quite certain that he was currently in a drug induced haze.  How odd; he hadn’t taken drugs for a while now, at least not illegal ones.  Sherlock idly considered why he’d taken these, allowing his mind to trawl along slowly for once.  Not his usual choice, depressants, which was what these certainly were.  He was familiar with the general symptoms, after all, if not specifically.  He remained still, half-lidded eyes staring at the ground in lazy acceptance of the situation.

He was lying on a cold, hard floor, which probably wasn’t the best place to be.  The fuzziness in his head was calming but only mildly pleasant.  He wondered just what he’d taken this time.  A depressant, ah yes: some sort of sedative.  Sleeping pills, maybe.  It was hard to tell.

There was some sound behind him and Sherlock rolled over, lethargic.  The motion set his head spinning and the room tilting, so he pressed his eyes shut tight for a moment.  The sounds – muffled thumping, scuffling – had paused while he had been moving, but they’d started up again, more loud and quicker this time.  Sherlock opened his eyes to see what was happening.  Stopped short as soon as he saw, as soon as the image registered.  He thought, he’d have to reassess his guess of what he was on, because he was sure this was a hallucination, and hallucinations didn’t usually occur with sleeping pills. 

John and Moriarty were kneeling a few metres away from him – at least, hallucination-Moriarty was kneeling.  Hallucination-John was prone, being knelt on, struggling and spitting breathless curses around a gag as the other man tugged at and tightened the lacings to the corset hallucination-John was wearing.  It was a dark, vulgar red corset, complete with a long period-style skirt and frills.  It was tightened to what looked like a very uncomfortable extent.  Hallucination-John had bare feet and legs and his face around the gag was flushed. 

Sherlock blinked hard and moved a hand to rub at his eyes.  Right.  Not sleeping pills.  But this didn’t particularly feel like a hallucinogen either.  His limbs and eyelids felt like they had a two stone weight attached to each.  The drug was suddenly no longer pleasant. 

“What are you doing?” he slurred out.  Hallucination-John froze while hallucination-Moriarty looked up and grinned widely.  Sherlock felt a sudden, deep stab of hatred for this psychedelic.  Fuck.  He was never taking these again, whatever they were.

“Welcome back!” hallucination-Moriarty said, cheerfully.  Hallucination-John had gone a deeper red to match his dress, and was looking away.  The gag moved as his jaws worked ineffectively.  “It was either the maid’s uniform or this, and since our Johnny has hurt his ribs I felt it would this would be better to bind them with.  Isn’t that right, Johnny?” He gave another tug at the lacings. 

Hallucination-John kicked, wriggled, using his face inadvertently to knock away the criminal’s hand at his scalp.  The skirt had ridden up and from the angle he was at, Sherlock could clearly see that hallucination-John was wearing nothing at all underneath the dress.  He looked away quickly, hoping desperately that this trip would end soon.  Now, preferably.  Sherlock closed his eyes to the sound of creaking, taut fabric, pained grunts and huffing breath.  
.

When Sherlock woke next he moved from sleep slowly, but to full wakefulness.  His eyes had fluttered for a moment but he shut them quickly, holding himself still.  He was still on the same hard floor, but the previous sounds had gone and he hoped, desperately, deep in his gut, that the hallucinations had been just hallucinations and were gone also.

Then the shuff of material – silk.  Heavy, unsteady panting.  Sherlock’s heart sank slowly, as if into cold water. 

“You sick bastard,” John croaked in-between the gasps.  The unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh, a heavy handed slap.  “- _the fuck off me_.”  Another slap, then another.  Teeth clipping together, wordless noise of anger and helplessness.

Sherlock realised he was shaking.  He opened his eyes as he sat up then fell back down as the handcuffs preventing the use of his arms unbalanced him, a short length of chain attaching him to a ring inset into the floorboards.  He wriggled, inelegant but not caring, into a crouch. 

Moriarty was sitting beside John, and, _oh fuck_ , this isn’t a hallucination.  John still wore that dress, though the gag was off, showing the bruising around the corners of his mouth.  His arms were tied tight together behind him and judging by the aborted movements on the doctor’s part, to the floor as well.  Moriarty had one hand on John’s forehead, pushing him to the ground, while the other hovered above his snarling mouth with a tube of lipstick.  There were smears of strawberry pink on the doctor’s lips.  John was valiantly holding down the dress between the heels of his black-bruised feet. 

They were in a large rectangular room, four men with guns alert in each corner.  Very little chance of getting out without being shot first.  With the handcuffs? Likely impossible.  Sherlock desperately searched the rest of the room.  High ceiling, post-war build, no windows.  Lighting, flooring, door recently refitted.  He ducked his head down as he held back dry-heaves. 

“And he’s back, ladies and gentlemen!” Moriarty crowed.  Sherlock looked up as John gasped out: “Sherlock, oh God, fuck, Sherlock.”  He was out of breath, panting and dribbling, chest heaving uselessly.  Moriarty caught Sherlock staring at the corset like it was an alien, the product of an acid trip.  The criminal slipped the cap of the lipstick on and set in on the floor, then gleefully wrapped both hands around John’s waist.  Another few inches tighter and his fingers would touch.  John made an unintelligible noise before sloppily wiping the lipstick off onto his bare shoulder. 

“Do you like it?” Moriarty asked, running his hands up and down the seams as if admiring his handiwork.  “I had to get some help to get it so small, okay, but just look at the results!” Sherlock was looking at anything other than the results.  His handcuffs were too tight, he had neither the time nor the leverage to break his thumbs to get out of them.  His head was a mess of panic.  John was stuttering something, but couldn’t seem to drag in enough air to make a full word. 

“Now, now,” Moriarty admonished.  “Don’t hurt yourself, I only needed you still so I can tell you what’s going to happen.  It’s an experiment, you see, and the ethics committee do want fully informed consent.”  He had a key in his hand, holding it up between two fingers.  John was trembling, full-body shakes, and his eyes were shuttering closed.  Moriarty jerked the lacings of the corset and his eyes flew open.  “Now then, here’s the experiment.  Pay attention, please, and then I’ll remove those handcuffs.

“‘The effects of sexual and stress related arousal on human behaviour’.  That’s the title.”  Moriarty himself was a little breathless, expression alight like that of an excited, greedy child.  “The methodology is simple.  One of us will rape John Watson here.  The other will hold him down. It’ll be filmed so I can determine the results later.”

The world seemed like it was tunnelling.  Sherlock could feel the floor drop from beneath him.

“As any good experiment, there is the right to withdraw, of course.  At any time you can walk out and no one will stop you, Sherlock.  I will, of course, have to conclude the experiment by myself in such a case.  And once the experiment’s done, you can both go home.”

“And what happens if I kill you before I withdraw?” Sherlock said.  He could hear his voice only distantly.  It sounded strange. 

“Then my men have been instructed to select one of you at random and cut off his fingers, feet and tongue, then pierce his eardrums and cut out his eyes, before depositing him at the nearest hospital.”  Moriarty wore a disapproving expression.  “The other will be killed.”

“If I refuse to cooperate?”

“Well, that means it’ll be me doing the raping, which, hey, is no great loss in my books – and as for the other part I did bring along a couple of tent pegs and a hammer.  They’d do the job of holding him down quite well, don’t you think? One in each shoulder?”

John had his eyes closed and his head turned away, mouth open as he sucked in air to constricted ribs.  His skin was flushed red and the puckered scarring on his shoulder looked white in offensive contrast; he was still shivering.  The dress still looked like it was a bad photo-manipulation.  Sherlock couldn’t think of a single time when he had been less turned on than this.  “I can’t,” he whispered.  “I’m not – I can’t.”

“Oh, Sherlock.  You’re not still using that married to your work line, are you?  Look at him!  He’s so sweet, so pretty.  I can’t believe you’re not secretly canoodling behind everyone’s backs.  Go on.  Admit it.”

“Sherlock,” John bit in.  “Moriarty, shut the fuck up.  Sherlock, just do it.  Whatever.”  His voice broke a little.  “Just get it over with.”

“Ooh, do you hear that Sherlock?” Moriarty grinned, waggling his eyebrows.  “The slut _wants_ you.”

“No,” Sherlock mumbled, because there had to be another way out, there _had_ to be, there always was.  He couldn’t see it now, that was all, but it just wasn’t possible that there wasn’t a way out.  This wasn’t possible.  Moriarty was tugging up the skirt of the dress and Sherlock concentrated on John’s left ear.  He’d seen John before – they’d shared a bathroom for months now, and though they were hardly prone to walking around naked neither of them were particularly bothered with modesty either.  But this was different, this was wrong and he felt sick, deep past his stomach.  He was staring at John’s ear but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see that the skirt was right up around his hips and Moriarty was running a hand up and down the doctor’s thigh. 

John’s collarbones were protruding, the muscles in his neck taut.  His legs were pressed as close together as physically possible and it looked like his every bone might snap from the pressure he was holding himself still with.  John made a small, animal-like sound in the back of his throat. 

“Please,” Sherlock found himself begging, the words jumping out unconsciously.  “Moriarty, please, stop. Please stop.”  He pulled at his handcuffs, lurching his body forward again and again.  “Stop, stop it.”

Moriarty turned and sighed.  “You don’t understand, do you?”  he asked. His hand was on John, fingers curled loose around his limp cock.  The sight of it was repulsive, brought bile up to sting the back of Sherlock’s mouth. “You can leave if you want, or you can help me, or I’ll get out the tent pegs.  There’s really no other option.”

John jolted and sucked in a ragged breath as Moriarty’s hand tightened and pulled.  “It’s one of the three, Sherlock.  Better chose quickly.”

“I’ll help,” Sherlock croaked.  He felt like he’d just done something indescribably filthy.  “I’ll help, but I can’t – I’ll hold him.”

Moriarty grinned widely.  He stood, leaving John to attempt to kick down the dress, and crouched behind Sherlock.  He put one hand on the detective’s shoulder, and, _oh God that’s the hand he touched John with_ , said in Sherlock’s ear: “remember what happens if you try anything.”  Sherlock nodded when he realised that Moriarty was waiting for an answer.  Then the handcuffs fell off and he sprang up, stretching long aching legs. 

“You can go now, if you don’t want this,” Moriarty said, casually.  He was crouching over John again, running a hand over his scalp: down his face to swipe more lipstick onto open lips, smoothing it over with his thumb. Trembling, John didn’t react other than to close his eyes for a long second.  “The choice is yours.”

Sherlock looked at the door without realising his body was moving, leaning towards it.  Yes, he could, he wanted to, he knew Moriarty wasn’t bluffing.  He could go away and never look back.  He was frightened, more so than he could ever remember being so before.  He _wanted_ to leave.  The four men around the room were looking at him.  He wanted nothing more than to know this wasn’t happening.

“Sherlock,” John whispered.  “Sherlock, please don’t leave. Please don’t.”

Sherlock turned around and walked the faltering few steps back to his friend.  His knees seemed to give way and he stumbled into a half-sitting position.  Moriarty tilted his head, pleased, and with another key unlocked John’s handcuffs also, throwing them carelessly over his shoulder.  The doctor lay panicked-still, barely moving his now free arms.  His shaking was making the silk and lace rustle minutely.  Moriarty gently rolled him over onto his front, one leg out straight and the other bent so that his knee was pushed up, fabric bunched up around his waist and covering nothing.  John’s hands scrabbled ineffectively for purchase at the floorboards in front of him, and it was obvious he was only barely controlling himself not to stand up and run, to attack Moriarty, to do _anything_.

Sherlock realised he was rocking, nodding his upper body back and forth but he couldn’t stop. His throat was working, he was sure he was about to be sick.  Every thought had condensed into one cloud of white noise.

Moriarty was holding on to one of his hands, straightening Sherlock’s fingers from a fist ever so gently.  Like a puppeteer he curled the tips into a tin of Vaseline; Sherlock pulled back, panicking at the feel of the greasy jelly on his fingers.  Vasaline?  Why Vasaline?  There must be something significant in that only he couldn't think -

“Did you really expect me to do all the work?  Oh, don’t worry Sherlock.  I had him cleaned before you woke.”  Moriarty said, smooth with a rough edge of warning.  He licked his lips, regaining his smile.  He drew Sherlock’s hand to John, guiding him like a child would arrange figurines.  At the soft contact John jerked away, making a muffled, half worded cry.  His breaths were coming in strangled, quickly drawn sobs.  Moriarty pinned him with a heavy hand to the small of his back, pushing down on the corset lacing, grimacing in sudden irritation. 

“I can’t do this,” Sherlock gasped, pulling his hand close to his chest as if it had been burnt.  His heart was beating wildly, the blur in his eyes were tears.  “Please, I can’t.”

“Then leave,” Moriarty said blandly. His hand was on the small of John’s trembling back, trawling down until the tips of his fingers were pressing lightly at John’s entrance.  “I’m not stopping you.  Leave.  Go on.”  The gunmen around them didn’t move.

John shuddered.  “Don’t leave,” he sobbed.  “Please, Sherlock, please, don’t leave.  Please don’t leave.  Please don’t.”

Sherlock didn’t leave.  He didn’t pull away as Moriarty took a hold if his hand again, applied more Vaseline.  He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes as he felt his index finger push into the tight, tight warmth, meeting shivering resistance.  Moriarty’s hand left his and he held still, stupid with fright.

“No wonder you’re married to your work,” Moriarty was saying, disapproving.  “You’re going to have to do more than that, dear.”  A hand on his again, pushing. Sherlock could feel the ring of muscles spasm around his first knuckle, then his second.  His other fingers, curled into a fist, pushed involuntarily against John’s arse.  “Sherlock, if you don’t do better than that I’m going to have to do it myself.”  A hard push and there was a hot, impossibly tight _movement_ as John gave a short, pained sob, twitching forward.

He didn’t quite know the mechanics involved, but two seconds later and Sherlock found himself on his hands and knees, retching and spitting up bile.  He was crying.  His limbs could barely hold him up.  There were arms around his shoulders and he shrugged them off violently, crawling away.  He felt like an animal: an ugly animal, an obscene, primitive creature.  “Oh, Sherlock,” Moriarty said.  “I’m sorry. Here, you just hold him.  I’ll do this.”

Moriarty was tugging him towards John.  Sherlock arched away from the offending touch but was dragged without any real effort to the other man.  This was a nightmare.  This was a nightmare.  Why wasn’t he waking up?  He clung to John’s forearms.  He noticed a sickly, faux-floral scent.  Perfume.  An expensive one but the name he knew skittered and escaped thought.  Why was this hurting?  How could something so material as rape not even his own affect him so much?

“Sherlock,” John said.  His voice was breaking up into tiny fragments.  “Sherlock, please, just do this so we can go.  Sherlock, please.”

“I don’t want to,” Sherlock heard himself saying, the words spilling out by themselves.  “I’m so frightened I can’t do this, I don’t want to do this.”

“Just do it, then we can go home.”  John was clinging on to his shirt front.  “Just think about that.  God, Sherlock, he’ll kill us if we don’t.”

“I’ll only kill one of you,” Moriarty corrected mildly as he knelt between John’s legs.  “Now, Sherlock, if you please.  Any movement and I’m afraid I’ll have to bring out the tent pegs.”

Sherlock’s eyes were tight closed as he reached over and held onto John, wrapping his long arms around the smaller man’s body, pinning him to the ground.  “God, John,” he was saying.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry John, I’m sorry.”

Underneath him, John tensed, curling into the ground.  The material of the corset was smooth and hard, not at all like his usual woollen jumpers and shirts.  Then John’s whole body jarred and he made a raw noise, as much as the suffocation of the dress allowed.  He twisted and Sherlock convulsively held tighter.  The next cry was quieter, smothered as best the doctor could manage.  His fingers dug into Sherlock’s arm hard enough to bruise. 

“Sherlock,” Moriarty said, sounding delighted and attention-seeking and perverse: panting, an animal in heat, sing-song tone broken up by his own thrusting.  “Changed your mind? I’m so-o-o generous; there’s still time to switch places.  I know you want it.“  Sherlock looked up though he knew that was exactly what the vulgar barbs were for: crude words everyone knew were false but words he couldn’t resist reacting to.  “You _want_ the bitch useless and helpless under you, admit it.  _It_ – _turns_ – _you – on_. Oh, and wouldn’t I know!”

Sherlock looked and regretted it instantly.  Barely inches away from his face, too close, too close were it purely armchair theory,  Moriarty had two fingers inside of John, pumping slowly and then scissoring them, twisting.  They were slicked with oil and blood, smeared.  At every movement of those fingers John stuttered and whimpered. Moriarty removed his hand for a few seconds, wiping it on the doctor’s thighs, only to work the fingers in anew, joined now by a third.

Sherlock closed his eyes.  There was a shout spilling from his teeth.  John stilled for a moment then started thrashing, his previous self-control gone.  He was hyperventilating to a dangerous degree even were he not wearing the hated corset.  Sobbing.

An endless moment occurred when the world was only aching arms holding onto a writhing body and a silence scribbled on by pants and moans and the friction of damp flesh on flesh. Then there was a sticky hand at Sherlock’s face, pushing him up by the chin.  Sherlock opened his eyes with a snap to see Moriarty lean in close to him, close enough so that in another few inches their foreheads might touch.  He was leaning over John’s struggling figure, grinning and panting.  His arousal was blaring obvious, erect from his open fly and nudging at John’s entrance.  It pushed in with two short thrusts of the criminal’s hips.

John screamed, the noise tripping and faltering with every insufficient breath and new push.  Sherlock clung to the writhing body without even knowing why any more, holding John’s arms against his torso, both of their bodies moving together.  The sound of his friend’s breathless screams and the smack of flesh on flesh had driven out all thought from his head until all that was left was a primal fear, a single condensed moment of horror. 

This wasn’t a nightmare.  This was Hell.

An arm got free and John clawed at the ground, pushing them up in a desperate, useless movement.  Moriarty grunted, irritation as he lost his rhythm.  In sheer panic Sherlock grabbed at John’s arm.  He pulled at it and it collapsed, sending them to the ground with a heavy thud.  More moments, time becoming a concept that no longer seemed to apply.  It took the detective a long few moments to realise that John had stopped struggling or making a sound, only jerking with the rhythm of the force of Moriarty’s thrusts.  Lifeless, inanimate.  It was this final motionless that caused him the detective fall back as if electrocuted.  Sherlock turned and was violently sick, chest heaving again and again as viscous, lumpy fluid splashed from his teeth and out of his nose.  Vomit wetted his splayed hands, dripping across the floor.

When he turned Moriarty was still rutting into a limp John, red smeared hands gripping tight to the narrowest part of the hourglass corset. 

“Poor dear,” Moriarty panted.  “The excitement got too much for her.”

“ _Him_. Get off him,” Sherlock snarled, or meant to snarl – it came out more of a cracked whisper.  He stumbled on all fours towards the man, too drained to stand, hands outstretched to strangle or worse.  “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, you _bastard_.”

“Better not,” Moriarty said, strained, face pinched in excessive lewd pleasure only half faked.  He nodded to the men whose guns were aimed unerringly in their direction.  John was stirring again, hands moving across the floor.  He was crying in between moans and gasps of air, attempting weakly to crawl away.  He wasn’t John Watson any more, but something frightening and weak and ruined.  Sherlock could barely look, barely process the information.  The two realities of what he knew and what he saw didn’t match, enantiomers; they made his eyes, throat and chest hurt and made his heart stagger.  His ribs wouldn’t move air into and out of his lungs, muscles losing tone.  He didn’t know what was happening to his body.  It felt like it was falling apart around him, cell by cell, tissue by tissue, worse than it had ever done before.  Worse than the overdoses, worse the withdrawals.  

Moriarty added, as if in afterthought: “remember what happens to the one who lives.”

  
Sherlock could only just remember but he stopped, eventually, when his body realised his mind was trying to communicate with it. He covered his face with his forearms, listened to Moriarty as the man came far too loudly, vulgar moaning, slowing in his thrusts before stopping, finally stopping. It felt like Sherlock’s skin was crawling with parasites, and he didn’t know whether it had been him who’d spread them to John’s body or the other way around.

“I’m off now, boys and girls,” Moriarty said, giggled breathlessly. He stood and smoothed his creased suit, wiping himself off on a handkerchief, leaving John to curl up into himself on the floor. Moriarty threw a sated, casual smirk at the detective as the square of pink stained fabric was dropped to land on John’s legs. “If you wanted to have a go, I’d suggest doing it now - what with your lack of experience and him being… loosened up. Stretched. _Relaxed_ , shall we say. And I do recommend it, Sherlock, he’s _very good_.”

Sherlock couldn’t help but hear as he pitched forward, scrambled at the lacings of the corset, already having tugged the skirt down and striking away the handkerchief. He didn’t listen but the words registered anyway. John was breathing, but only just. There was bruising showing around his shoulders, sloppy fingerprints on his arms. His fingerprints. The knots weren’t coming out and Sherlock tugged at them, only succeeding in yanking John’s body up and down.

“Oh and dears? I really wouldn’t tell anyone about this,” Moriarty’s voice called back and the detective flinched at the sound of it. John didn’t react. “As much as I’d love to publish my findings - peer review, you see - I’m sure you would prefer it if I didn’t. What with all of this incriminating data I have, filming the whole thing and all. It might get into the wrong hands, but who knows? Best to keep this between us three. _Sherlock_ , see you around. You too, darling. Looking forward to it, _Bell-a._ ”

Why were the knots so tight? John was starting to struggle. There were smears of lipstick on the floor where his face had lain; the reek of sweat, sex, vomit and perfume was overpowering. ‘ _I wouldn’t tell anyone about this_ ’, the words rang around in Sherlock’s head until they deafened him. Oh fuck, oh, God, ‘ _incriminating film_ ’.

White horror at even beginning to imagine what Moriarty could do with any documentation he had managed to get of this. Sherlock’s teeth were chattering. He could feel tears clean salty tracks down the vomit that was drying on his face.

Sherlock’s fingers slipped and tangled uselessly as he only succeeded in tightening the intricate knots. John has fallen still and it was both a blessing and terrifying. Sherlock didn’t know what to say, what John would have said to make it better. A hundred sentences ran through his head and each were discarded as incorrect. _You, ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool, people might talk_. Wrong, so _wrong_. Just the thought of the soft, friendly mocking words made him want to be sick.

Nothing he could think of to say was good enough. There was nothing he could think of to do that might solve this.

Finally the knots fell undone and pulling at the strings inch by inch Sherlock loosened the stiff fabric, prying it from the other man’s flesh. John stirred, slurring out a noise, then as the new leeway allowed for it gasped and pulled in the desperate breaths of a man half-drowned.

The corset split open like a ribcage as the laces were pulled out from their eyelets, agonisingly slowly. Underneath was painted purples and reds like a second layer of cloth, only it wasn’t cloth. John’s entire waist was covered in angry bruises, stripes of colour on his back and curling around his chest where the boning had lain. The indents of the seams and laces were as clear as if someone had drawn them on in bold marker pen. John turned over so that he was sitting up, flinched and hurriedly curled down onto his back. He scrambled his way out of the corset and Sherlock averted his eyes as if the other man had any dignity at all left to lose.


	2. Chapter 2

“Your jacket,” John croaked, his voice sounding as abused as the rest of him appeared.  The doctor shrank into himself as he ever so gingerly pulled his legs out from the folds of the dress. “Sherlock? Can - can I?”

Some vital connection had been cut somewhere along the line.  Sherlock stared at John, uncomprehending.  The doctor reached out a hand to clutch at the navy material of his sleeve, fingers grasping at it loosely, unwilling or unable to speak and ask him again.

 It took another moment but Sherlock suddenly understood, cursing himself as he shrugged out of the jacket, all but dropping it on the doctor’s outstretched arms.  As John took it the detective wriggled his way out of his shoes and trousers as well: he had his boxer shorts on, John… didn’t.  The cool air prickled his legs as he stood and looked away while waiting for the other man to dress, and _it was taking too long, it’s been three minutes, longer, it shouldn’t take three minutes ten seconds to put on a jacket and trousers and shoes; something’s happened, something I didn’t know and couldn’t account fo_ _r_ , only he didn’t dare turn around to check.  Sherlock concentrated on the sensation of forming gooseflesh, the cold creeping in through his shirt sleeves and around the buttonholes.  

They walked out of the door together, as quickly as John’s limping could manage.  Outside was dark and damp, drizzle wetting the pair, and they stood on the cracked pavement.  Sherlock wiped his hands on his shirt and tried not to let his body tremble.  He didn’t have any idea where they were, he didn’t have any money,  they were hardly prepared to wander the streets at night like this.

A cab rolled down a window and the cabbie, a middle aged, overweight man, peered out.  “You two for Baker street?” he said, scratching his smooth chin.  “Your friend prepaid, right?  The Irish chap?”

It took a moment but Sherlock nodded, an up-tilt of the head, and they got in to the cab, ignoring the startled look the man gave them upon taking in their appearances.  There was nowhere else to go.  Sherlock didn’t think that anything Moriarty could do now would matter much anymore.

The journey home was torturous, and Sherlock pressed himself to the cold window.  John was sitting on the other side of the cab, face pale and one leg tucked underneath him.  He was biting the inside of his cheeks, eyes watering and wincing at every turn and bump in the road.  They would have sat together, once, Sherlock can’t help but think: arms and legs pressing together even though there was always room enough for space in between.  An unspoken agreement, a simple sharing of contact that at once was significant and utterly not.  

They’d pulled up outside of their house, Sherlock too exhausted to be glad that they hadn’t been left somewhere else instead.  He waited for John to clamber out, painstakingly slowly, and then followed.  His mind refused to function, like it was working on autopilot.  There were no chemicals left, no neurotransmitters to connect any synapse, only emptiness.  Even as a thought surfaced to object to the romantic incorrectness of that metaphor, it was heard only through a membrane inches thick.

“Listen, mate,” the cabbie was saying.  “You and your friend… are you alright?  Should I get the police, or something? I can take you to a hospital.  Your friend…” he trailed off and Sherlock stopped to look back at his anxious face.  Hospital.  Hospital: rape kit.  Internal bleeding.  Pain meds.  Doctors.  ‘ _Best to keep this between us three_ ’.

“No,” the detective said: quiet, faltering.  There was a multitude of excuses and explanations he knew he should use but couldn’t bring forward to recite.  “We – we’re okay.  We’re… good.”  He left the cabbie in the dark street and closed the door tight behind him.  John was already in the flat, how had he opened the front door?  There was shuffling upstairs, the sound of heavy breathing.  Each stair felt like a small marathon and a small part of Sherlock hated how self-centred he was.  The rest was too tired, too frightened, to care.

.

By the time Sherlock reached the top of the seventeenth step the noise along with the doctor had retreated into the bathroom, and he followed them to stand listening in the hall.  Amid the sounds of shedding clothes, riffled bottles, the cabinet being closed too quickly, the sound of breathing inexorably turned into hushed whimpers, hushed whimpers into sobs.  The shower started.  He could go in, John hadn’t locked the door.  He should.  That was what people did in these kinds of situations, wasn’t it?  Say a few specific lines, patch up the physical injuries, even if it was just rubbing arnica cream onto bruises.  Hold on to each other until they fell asleep from crying.  Wasn’t it?  Or was that just yet another urban myth?  Sherlock stood numbly outside of the bathroom door and listened to the hiss of the shower trying to drown out muffled cries. 

He went into the kitchen where the noises were quieter, pulling on his dressing gown on the way.  He could still feel a body panicking underneath his and oily Vaseline on shaky fingers.  Couldn’t run the tap, that would make the water in the shower cold.  Bleach.  He had bleach.  The viscous fluid stung, flushed his skin pink.  He could still hear John.  He applied a scourer, pink skin turning to red flesh.  This was unhealthy, he knew, severely logical beneath the roar of white noise – but it was also systematic, calming, this removal of skin, and the feeling in his fingers was an anchor.    
John came out of the shower and Sherlock shrank away from the stairs, heart thumping in the – absurd, logic told him, harmful – desire to hide from the other man.  There was no need: John’s door closed with a snick and he didn’t come downstairs.  Sherlock dabbed antiseptic from an ancient tube of Germoline onto the scrapes over his hands, feeling worthless and inadequate.  

He went to bed and woke no better.  Went out before John came downstairs in the morning to the cold humidity of London’s streets and every time he managed to convince himself to stop being so selfish and return he found another street, another alleyway leading outwards.  It was dark when he returned and Sherlock went straight to bed; John was tucked away in his room out of sight.  The doctor had been to a surgery on the other side of London, he’d phoned Sarah but not talked as long as they usually did.

Hidden away in his room with his back firmly to the wall, the detective only just didn’t look on his laptop for the right words to say.  His fingers hovered over the keys as the curser in the search bar blinked up at him.  He snapped shut the laptop: embarrassed, guilty, and curled up on his bed.

The next day Sherlock forced himself to spend at home, doing everything to appear as if he were not; John seemed to do likewise.  They didn’t talk at all.  The third day came and went, as did the fourth, the pair shying away from each other like two of the same magnet poles.  The act of pretending nothing was wrong at all was stilted, awkward and cruel, faltered every time some evidence could not be hidden.  Every time he caught John opening his mouth as if to speak, Sherlock’s pulse tripped as it sped uncontrollably.  Each time he was crushed between relief and disappointment as nothing was said. 

On the fifth day Lestrade asked over the phone if everything was okay.  Sherlock said yes.  On the sixth day he almost reached out and touched the back of John’s hand, but didn’t dare.  John flinched from the motion anyway, stumbling over an insensible excuse and apology.  On the seventh day Sherlock got an email from his brother reading simply that all of the film from that day had been sourced and destroyed.  He didn’t reply and Mycroft didn’t pursue it further.

Weeks passed. John was still off work, lying awkwardly on his chair and reading everything from pulp fiction to the BMJ.  He hadn’t updated his blog.  Sherlock took on a case that was solved in half an hour of him being at the crime scene.  John hadn’t come with him and more than once Sherlock stopped himself from turning to ask an opinion, to bounce ideas, to just watch John’s face.  It felt like black and white film.

The blackmailer was promptly named and arrested but Sherlock couldn’t quite manage the sense of victory from being right yet again, even a half-hearted act; the usual triumph was hollow.  The next case email he deleted before he’d even finished reading, losing interest as the words started to blur into something foreign.  There was no enthusiasm anymore, nothing worth getting up.

It was meant to be better by now.  Sherlock still couldn’t think of a single line or action that was supposed to make it so.  The internet, the social constructs John had always put so much emphasis on, hadn’t helped at all.  When in a strange moment of bravery Sherlock had tried to tell this to John, the doctor had only smiled in tired acceptance and understanding that had made Sherlock feel worse than pitiable.

He picked at the little scabs forming and reforming on his fingers and smudged the pearling blood drops over his skin.  That hurt, just about.  So did the fact that John hardly looked at him, never touched – but since he was doing the same, Sherlock thought that this was likely understandable.  It hurt that he couldn’t delete the raw sounds and scents and feel of John while _then_ , of Moriarty, even as the film had been deleted.  It hurt in understanding that time was not healing this, not like it was supposed to, like what people on the T.V. and internet promised.  It hurt that John had phoned and talked to Sarah and Harry and Lestrade – Lestrade!, speaking more frivolous words in ten minutes to them than what they’d shared with each other in ten times that.  It hurt that John no longer smiled and joked and sat close beside him like what Sherlock’s bones ached for, even when his arms and stomach protested with horror at the thought.

Sherlock didn’t wish that Moriarty was dead, even as he said it and regretted not wanting it so much before.  The storm of emotion that Moriarty had gathered from the detective was no longer intrigue or admiration or anger.  It was curled small and compact, animal fearfulness that woke him shivering from sleep and made him watch John obsessively whenever and wherever he could, just because he could. 

Sherlock strongly suspected the absence of further barbs from Moriarty had something to do with his brother.  That would have bothered him, not that long ago.  Now he couldn’t find the energy to care.

He didn’t wish Moriarty was dead – though he wanted that too – he wished that he’d never occurred, wiped from existence the moment his first two molecules bonded.  He wished with every bone and fibre of his body that there never had been a Jim Moriarty at all.

The absolute impossibility of it ached like a bruise that wouldn’t heal.

.  
A month passed and though tentative words had begun to emerge, a small sad mockery of their previous friendship, the world had yet to right itself.  A thick, semi-permeable membrane had settled over his self and hadn’t yet lysed.  Information diffused in slowly and at an odd angle.  It was better than at the beginning, when nothing at all could register; John himself had said that it would only get better in time.  Sherlock wanted it to be better _now_.  John had said it would all heal if treated properly, even though two hours after saying that he had lost his temper and nerve at some radio program that was playing in the background.

It hurt that the small, tender feeling that had made him want John to smile, to smile with _him_ , was cut into long ribbons.  It hurt that the undisclosed longing to press his lips to John’s in chaste and loving appreciation was now confused and disgusting and utterly macerated in the least medically appropriate way possible.

Sometimes Sherlock daydreamed.  He could picture John, curled up on his side in bed, sleeping: a task more than easy to do, considering how many hours he’d spent watching the other man sleep just so.  More often now Sherlock pictured himself curled up behind John, pressing his chest to the doctor’s back, weaving their legs together.  John would smile, arch his spine and hold on to the hand Sherlock would wrap around his waist.

Sometimes the daydreams would remain daydreams, and Sherlock wouldn’t burst awake from himself holding John down as the man _screamed_ ; but only sometimes.

.

Three months passed.  John had been right and no more than right, when it came to getting better.  Sherlock chafed and hated his impatience.  It should be enough, what they had – and when it wasn’t it was only himself who was in the wrong.  That knowledge was comforting, because he already knew that in this, John was only ever right, and how could he ever not be?  

They sat on opposite ends of the sofa, talking and only half watching the film playing in front of them: a classic, according to the doctor, and therefore something Sherlock was obliged to watch.  Sherlock didn’t even remember the title – he had been too busy studying every nuance of his flatmate’s enjoyment to pay much attention.  There was grainy CGI and decent enough acting.  Typical, cliché, probably a plot that could be worked out via statistics only.  If he ever needed information on this film then he could just ask John, anyway.  John, who’s head was tilted ever so slightly to the right, who’s respiratory rate was twelve-point-six-two-five per minute on average and who’s obvious pleasure in the film created an expression that was far, far more captivating than any actor.

There was a natural lull in the conversation: Sherlock closed his mouth to smile and received one in return that made his heart flush up, made him smile a small bit wider, lean an inch closer.  John didn’t seem to notice and cast his eyes back to the screen, lips still curled up.  A small part of Sherlock’s heart fell a step and he searched John’s face, then looked away to the television.  Damn.  He’d lost count of John’s respiration rate.  The assortment of people running about and shouting didn’t seem to make much sense and were no more interesting than they’d ever been.

A few tedious and irritatingly confusing minutes later and a couple in the film started to kiss loudly; _a sad inevitability, highly unlikely in real life_ : Sherlock rolled his eyes, repulsion fluttering in his belly. John reached for the remote convulsively and switched the television off, hasty making him clumsy.

The room pitched into semi-darkness.  John chuckled nervously, embarrassed, and wet his lips, glancing at his flatmate.  His hands wrung each other.  Sherlock froze, tried to think of what to do, resolutely ignored the still-humming DVD player, the black screen, as if they were normal.  It was distracting, though, and he couldn’t think – there was something he knew, ought to know.  He remembered vaguely a film where something like this had happened: the woman who’d been upset had been hugged tight with various illogical and frankly untrue platitudes, until she had stopped struggling to get away and the pair had ended up having wild sex on the dining room table.  Sherlock thought John was more likely to severely damage him than swoon in his arms, and the idea of wild sex was disgusting and frightening in equal measures.

“Right, well, I’m off to bed then,” John said, making little embarrassed motions with his hands, pinned under the detective’s eyes even as the pair rose from the suddenly unattractive sofa.  John had flushed red, though it was almost invisible in the dark, and he was still anxiously smiling.  They stood together for a little bit more, awkward, still with four long feet between them.  John nodded, briefly, an up-tilt to his chin.  “See you in the morning?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, throat tight.

What else was there to say?  He stepped back, smiled just a little – received a little, genuine smile in return – and let John go.

.

.

Three years after this Sherlock would no longer have his daydreams – a pair of heartbeats and kisses like moths.  This may only have been due to the fact that lying awake in John’s warm arms was always far, far lovelier.


End file.
